!Tention Part 11

"So you ought to be."

"To enjoy myself so," continued Pen, "while you, with your mouth so out of taste and no appet.i.te, could hardly eat a bit."

"Well, who's to have a happet.i.te with a wound like mine? I shall never get no better till I get a mug of real old English beer."

"Never mind; you get plenty of milk."

"Ya! Nasty, sickly stuff! I'll never touch it again."

"Well then, beautiful sparkling water."

"Who wants sparkling water? 'Tain't like English. It's so thin and cold."

"Come, come; you must own that you are mending fast, Punch."

"Who wants to be mended," snarled the poor fellow, "and go through life like my old woman's cracked chayney plate with the rivet in it! I was a strong lad once, and could beat any drummer in the regiment in a race, while now I ought to be in horspital."

"No, you ought not. I'll tell you what you want, Punch."

"Oh, I know."

"No, you don't. You want to get just a little stronger, so as you can walk ten miles in a day."

"Ten miles! Why, I used to do twenty easy."

"So you will again, lad; but I mean in a night, for we shall have to lie up all day and march all night so as to keep clear of the enemy."

"Then you mean for us to try and get out of this wretched hole?"

"I mean for us to go on tramp as soon as you are quite strong enough; and then you will think it's a beautiful valley. Why, Punch, I have crept about here of a night while you have been asleep, so that I have got to know the place by heart, and I should like to have the chance of leading our fellows into places I know where they could hold it against ten times or twenty times their number of Frenchmen who might try to drive them out."

"You have got to know that?" said Punch with a show of animation that had grown strange to the poor fellow.

"Yes," cried Pen triumphantly.

"Well, then, all I have got to say is you waren't playing fair."

"Of course it wasn't. Seeing you were so weak you couldn't walk."

"There now, you are laughing at a fellow; but you don't play fair."

"Don't I? In what way?"

"Why, you promised while I have been so bad that you would read to me a bit."

"And I couldn't, Punch, because we have got nothing to read."

"And then you promised that you would tell me how it was you come to take the king's s.h.i.+lling."

"Well, yes, I did; but you don't want to know that."

"Yes, I do. I have been wanting to know ever since."

"Why, boy?"

"Because it seems so queer that a lad like you should join the ranks."

"Why queer? You are too young yet, but you will be in the ranks some day as a full private."

"Yes, some day; but then, you see, my father was a soldier. Yours warn't, was he?"

"No-o," said Pen, frowning and looking straight away before him out of the hut-door.

"Well, then, why don't you speak out?"

"Because I don't feel much disposed. It is rather a tender subject, Punch."

"There, I always knew there was something. Look here; you and me's friends and comrades, ain't we?"

"I think so, Punch. I have tried to be."

"So you have. n.o.body could have been better. I have lain awake lots of times and thought about what you did. You haven't minded my saying such nasty things as I have sometimes?"

"Not I, Punch. Sick people are often irritable."

"Yes," said the boy eagerly, "that's it. I have said lots of things to you that I didn't mean; but it's when my back's been very bad, and it seemed to spur me on to be spiteful, and I have been very sorry sometimes, only I was ashamed to tell you. But you haven't done anything to be ashamed of?" Pen was silent for a few moments.

"Ashamed? No--yes."

"Well, you can't have been both," said the boy. "Whatcher mean by that?"

"There have been times, Punch, when I have felt ashamed of what I have done."

"Why, what have you done? I don't believe it was ever anything bad.

You say what it was. I'll never tell."

"Enlisted for a soldier."

"What?" cried the boy. "Why, that ain't nothing to be ashamed of. What stuff! Why, that's something to be proud of, specially in our Rifles.

In the other regiments we have got out here the lads are proud of being in scarlet. Let 'em. But I know better. There isn't one of them who wouldn't be proud to be in our dark-green, and to shoulder a rifle.

Besides, we have got our bit of scarlet on the collar and cuffs, and that's quite enough. Why, you are laughing at me! You couldn't be ashamed of being in our regiment. I know what it was--you ran away from home?"

"It was no longer home to me, Punch."

"Why, didn't you live there?"

"Yes; but it didn't seem like home any longer. It was like this, Punch.

My father and mother had died."